


Informed Sense of Accomplishment

by oliviathecf



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics)
Genre: And also a really bad boyfriend, Break Up, Bruce Wayne is a bit of a misogynist, F/M, Female!Hal Jordan, Introspection, Rule 63, Unhealthy Relationships, Well more like ghosting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:20:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22443232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliviathecf/pseuds/oliviathecf
Summary: Hallie couldn't stand the idea that this was the best thing for her.
Relationships: Hal Jordan/Bruce Wayne, Hallie Jordan/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 10
Kudos: 55





	Informed Sense of Accomplishment

**Author's Note:**

> I had this notion in my head, I was going to finish all of my WIPs. Starting January, I was going to do it! And then my computer broke for good and was in the repair shop for the better part of the month. Instead, here's a one shot which is just my thinly veiled thoughts about how people force themselves into relationships for the idea that it will bring you happiness.
> 
> Featuring Hallie because I missed her.
> 
> I wrote Bruce out to be a really bad boyfriend in this. Also the idea of his kids threatening his significant others isn't cute and I don't know why people think it is, it just makes them out to be nightmare children.
> 
> If you wanna experience it like I did, start listening to "Pressure to Party" by Julia Jacklin and then literally don't stop listening to it for like a month straight.
> 
> Enjoy!

In the dark of a room that would never be hers, Hallie tossed and turned in a lonely king sized bed and wondered when the hell her life had taken such a boring turn. She was on an extended shore leave, a break that everyone had told her that she deserved, that she desired, but Hallie had wondered if it was just some fantasy of a normal life. Of being a normal person, that long held on to thought of being something close to the average woman.

She rolled over onto her back, fist hitting the empty spot beside her like it was something she could punch. Her ring cast a dull green glow on her left hand, slowly starting to light up the room around her, a comfort in the uncomfortable.

This wasn’t her place, of course it wasn’t. And she wasn’t in her own bed, she didn’t even have a place to call home. No matter what Alfred told her, no matter what Bruce didn’t disagree with. She found herself hating Gotham those days, it felt more like a prison as she slowly started to count down the days to the end of her leave.

They had started just like any normal, happy couple would. Bruce made a decision, Hallie thought it was a stupid one and did her own plan, better than anything Bruce would’ve come up with. It all went fine but Bruce couldn’t deal with the fact that he had been wrong about something. So he cornered her in the locker room, hiked her up against a locker and fucked her hard enough to leave bruises.

And it had felt _good_ , that sour mixture of pain and pleasure, it thrummed through her body like a live wire. Someone out in the universe had fucked her up hard enough that she couldn’t help but associate the two, the idea that pleasure and love had to come with a side dish of pain and hate, but that was just how she was. There were no happy endings that she could earn, no true love story in her life. And Bruce was just supposed to be another in the endless cycle of hate and love, her hands weren’t meant to be treated kindly after all was said and done. There were still things that she needed to reconcile with, still things that she never would.

It would’ve been fine. If Bruce hadn’t changed the moment they started sleeping together. For starters, he called her his girlfriend way too quickly. It was in the paper the next day, the fucking Gotham Gazette, reporting on Gotham’s son Bruce Wayne and the nobody pilot that he was screwing. It had been an interesting text to recieve from Kylie, her own dumb mug, blurry. from the background of some group shot from Ferris Air right next to a glossy, perfectly modeled picture of Bruce Wayne.

She had drawn her dad’s jacket around her shoulders like a shield, unsure of how to deal with the attention, the pressure to be both Gotham’s newest queen and Gotham’s newest whore, a role she had never wanted to play, a role that Bruce had pushed her into without her permission.

Hallie was strong, she knew she was. So, why she didn’t just storm off after telling Bruce exactly where to stick his false notion that they were _dating_ , she wasn’t exactly sure. Perhaps it was that age old idea that she should be the one to settle down, a woman who had sown her wild fuckin oats.

She sat up and groaned into the palm of her hand, rubbing her eyes. Hallie looked at the clock on her phone, shining three AM like a curse, and resigned herself to another sleepless night in a lonely bed. Her insomnia had kicked in like clockwork, like it always did when she was on Earth. The place that was supposed to be her home, the planet that was supposed to be a comfort. Maybe it was true that she just didn’t belong to the place she was born anymore, the wide expanse of space opening her mind to better things.

Hallie had never been truly happy unless she was reaching for something beyond her reach. It had been the sky at first, and then it became the idea that she could ever truly understand the full depth of outer space, of what it meant to be a great Green Lantern.

The ring on her finger, the oath in her head. It wasn’t something that she could ever give up, not for the Earthen idea of what a happy ending was supposed to look like. Marriage, playing mommy to all of Bruce’s kids, maybe having some of her own. She’d name a boy Martin, a girl Martha, they’d argue about the color of the nursery while she kept a hand on her swollen stomach. Like she could protect it from the world, from their own mutual collection of failings.

Hallie dropped the hand that was cradling her flat stomach, there was nothing in there to protect. They had been safe after all, Bruce refused to fuck her without a condom, not like she wanted him to or anything like that. But he did it in a way that made her feel like she was dirty, like he thought that she had been everywhere and with everyone. Gotham’s newest whore.

It wasn’t like she could catch anything with the ring, not even a baby. Nothing to stand in the way of her doing her duties, not when she wore the ring everywhere. Even if Bruce had talked about it, about wanting to add another to his collection. He had laid a too-cold hand on her bare stomach as he fucked into her from behind, like the idea of filling her up got him off.

Maybe it did. It seemed like the idea of turning her into the perfect wife had started to entertain him, Bruce had always moved too fast with the people he had dated, and Hallie was starting to feel the pressure of his expectations, of the idea that she should be the perfect girlfriend, the perfect _wife_.

It had been alright at first, that they were two equals, that they were on the same page. But Bruce had started to see her as a _woman_ , with a capital W, that she was something to protect. Something inferior, a little thing to hold on a pedestal, something to worship and to be worshipped by in return.

And Hallie thought that some women might like something like that, the sensation of someone falling in love with you, the idea of a mutual sort of worship. A woman like Kylie, who talked about falling in love with a sort of reverence. A reverence for the act itself, the very action of falling in love without a person to fall in love with, like someone else was second fiddle.

Maybe it was just that Bruce was bad at it, bad at being in love. Maybe it wasn’t her fault that she had to force a smile when Bruce gave her some rehearsed compliment with the expectation of getting one in return, or that he avoided her eyes so often during sex that she’d rather roll over onto her stomach and look at the sheets below as he thrust into her with a sort of robotic perfection.

If she wouldn’t punch him for even thinking about it, he thought that maybe he could set them up on a date. They seemed to have the same thoughts about how love ought to be

What was she even doing there, why was she looking for love or something close with a man who seemed to have such a disdain for her? 

With a man that _she_ had such a disdain for. She couldn’t love Bruce, she could hardly bring herself to like him. And she was letting him treat her like she was one of his little girlfriends that the Gotham Gazette loved to stalk throughout the streets. Let them fucking insult the way she looked, her dad’s jacket on her shoulders too dowdy, they didn’t know. And Bruce didn’t fucking care even if he did know, he had agreed with the shitty rag he insisted on reading every morning at breakfast, Wayne Tech tablet open as he avoided making eye contact with Gotham’s newest fucking whore.

She was done. Hallie was up and off the bed before she even realized it, brain snapping back from her thoughts as she shrugged her jacket over her shoulders. He had left her naked on the bed after fucking her, a fuck toy, discarded in favor of the person he really was. Bruce Wayne was a fake man, he was only Batman and maybe that was all he had ever been. 

It was easy to recall their first time in the locker room as the put her few possessions into the bright green bag she had summoned. He had left his cowl on as he roughly fucked her without any pretense of her being anything but an object, and maybe that was better because at least he had been honest.

Her thoughts of getting out unscathed were thwarted by the scowling face of one of his kids, nearly pressed right against the door. Damian was out on patrol and the other two didn’t live in the manor, so that just left Tim.

“Going somewhere?” The kid sneered and Hallie snorted before she could stop herself.

Leaning against the door jam, Hallie crossed her arms and grinned.

“Yeah,” she said, “I was just leaving.”  
“Your leave from your Lantern duties isn’t over for another week.” Tim said, frowning.

Of course he had kept track. Most of his kids really creeped her out from their sort of Stepford-esque adoration of Bruce, but Tim had to be one of the worst of the worst. His not-so-thinly veiled threats towards her about as subtle as a fist to the face, and she knew that all of his kids were obsessed enough to make good on their promises.

Of course, she wasn’t worried about the half-pints on their own, but it would be annoying if they attempted to ruin her life as they had all had said. But she could handle herself and she knew that she had the full force of the Corps to have her back, especially Joan and Gal. And the Gazette had tanked her reputation as it was, and the League didn’t particularly like her that much anyway, so none of them could really get her.

Plus the sense of relief from being out of that manor and away from Bruce Wayne, that would be enough to push away any worries she might’ve had about those Bat brats. True freedom, maybe that was the only thing she needed. Open space in front of her and trying to force herself to settle for some informed sense of accomplishment that came from a relationship far, far behind.

“What about it?”  
“You shouldn’t be leaving until then.” He said and Hallie laughed.  
“Yeah, that’s not going to work for me.”

Hallie shouldered past him as he tried to block her path, beginning the long maze-like walk out of the manor to her freedom.

“Jordan,” Tim yelled, “I knew you’d break his heart.”

That stopped her in her tracks, and she shot him a look over her shoulder.

“You don’t get it.” She said, voice quiet.  
“I don’t get what?”

She didn’t really know how to explain everything that was in her head, every thought she had that led her to that moment. So Hallie just turned around and chose not to answer.

“When you see Bruce again, I want you to tell him something for me.”  
“What?”  
“Tell him to go fuck himself.”

And then she was off, enjoying the sound of Tim’s scandalized babbling. Her legs carried her faster through the halls until she found herself at the top of the grand staircase.

If she was being childish and indulgent, there was only one other thing she could do. Hiking herself up to sit on the polished banister, she let herself slide down it with a shrill cackle, grin broad on her face. It might’ve been the one fun thing she had ever done while in his awful tomb, the grave Bruce Wayne had dug himself to further propagate the idea that he was a deep, dark intellectual. A man so tortured by his past that he couldn’t look anything in the eyes.

Hallie’s boots hit the marble floor and she turned to look at the dark sadness of Wayne Manor. She had thought she was alone but her eyes met Alfred’s as he stood in the hall, expression unreadable on his face. But then he gave her a curt nod and she knew that a part of him knew exactly why she was leaving.

With no one else trying to stop her, she gave Alfred a salute and a grin, turning on her heels and pushing the door open to take off into the night sky and leave Gotham behind in a bright, blinding trail of green.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me at these various places online, feel free to hit me up about this fic or some of my other ones!
> 
> [ Fic Blog. ](https://fanfictionolivia.tumblr.com/)  
> [ Twitter. ](https://twitter.com/fficolivia)


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